Confined Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs) have become a national issue.
A new hog plant in Utah will produce more animal waste than the animal and
human waste created by the city of Los Angeles; 1,600 dairies in the Central
Valley of California produce more waste than a city of 21 million people.
The annual production of 600 million chickens on the Delmarva Peninsula near
Washington, D.C. generates as much nitrogen as a city of almost 500,000
people.

In North Carolina, 35 million gallons of animal waste were spilled in
1995, killing 10 million fish. In 1996, more than 40 manure spills were
recorded in Iowa, Minnesota and Missouri, double the number reported in
1992. Earlier this year, microbe pfiesteria associated with the poultry
industry killed 30,000 fish in the Chesapeake Bay and another 450,000 fish
in North Carolina attributed to hog waste. Pfiesteria grow in waters with
excessive nutrients. In the Gulf of Mexico, animal waste has helped to
create a "dead zone" of up to 7,000 square miles. The Center for Disease
Control has just released a report attributing foodborne diseases to food
industry consolidation and the decrease in effective microbe resistance in
humans from the antibiotics used to industrialize animals for confinement
facilities.

The National Catholic Rural Life Conference (NCRLC) has for 75 years been
a voice for participative democracy, widespread ownership of land, the
defense of nature, animal welfare, support for small and moderate-sized
independent family farms, economic justice, rural and urban interdependence.
Such values are drawn from the message of the Gospel and the social
teachings of our Church. Furthermore, we see such values best represented in
the agricultural arena by what is called sustainable agriculture.

In the light of present concerns about the industrialization of
agriculture and environmental pollution as represented especially by the hog
industry, the NCRLC supports efforts for a national dialogue on Confined
Animal Feeding Operations and their impacts on water quality, the
environment, and local communities. Too much time has elapsed and too much
damage has been done without an adequate national dialogue on these issues.

As a first step, the NCRLC supports a moratorium on the expansion and
building of new farm factories and calls for a serious consideration of
their replacement by sustainable agricultural systems which are
environmentally safe, economically viable, and socially just. While the
federal government, the states, and local communities reassess the structure
of agriculture, such a moratorium seems especially urgent. Without a
moratorium, the number of CAFOs will continue to proliferate, causing a
significant increase in the devastating pollution, health, and social
impacts by these confinement facilities across the country.

Included among the states currently dealing with CAFO issues are:
Alabama, Georgia, Kansas, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Minnesota,
Nebraska, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Texas, Utah and
Washington. Legislators, judges, and local citizens groups are reviewing the
legal safeguards at every level to ensure clean water, a safe environment,
food safety, and social justice. Such efforts are beginning to pay
dividends:

In Indiana, for example, an administrative law judge has shut down a
proposed confined feeding operation. In Kentucky, the attorney general has
ruled that large operations are not exempt from local ordinances saying they
are "not reasonable or prudent, accepted and customary." After two years of
difficulties, North Carolina has imposed strong restrictions on confinement
operations. South Dakota citizens recently secured sufficient signatures
(31,000) to hold a statewide referendum proposing an anti-corporate farming
law similar to Nebraska's. All but two of the 20 counties in Kansas had
voted against new corporate hog farms. At the federal level, a new bill has
been introduced to regulate CAFOs and a federal summit is being proposed to
discuss animal waste management.

As the livestock industry has been restructured, a growing dependence has
developed on enormous open-air lagoon waste storage and liquid manure
application systems. These systems have been prone to breaks, spills, and
runoff into surface water and seepage into ground water. The Clean Water Act
is again to be renewed after 25 years. While reforms of that Act are being
developed, a moratorium on CAFOs is needed to forestall potentially
devastating effects.

We challenge the notion that CAFOs, particularly hog factories, are a
boon to local economies. Studies have shown that for every job created by a
hog factory, three are lost. Every year, hog factories put almost 31,000
farmers out of business, out of their homes, and out of their communities.
In 1990, there were 670,350 family hog farms; in 1995, there were only
208,780. Between 1994 and 1996, approximately 4,439 family farmers were
displaced by the expansion of the top 30 pork producing companies, according
to a recent study done by Successful Farming. While concentration in pork
production grows, independent family farmers are being forced out. The same
can be said about dairy, beef, and poultry farming.

NCRLC invites others to join the call for a moratorium and the
replacement of factory farms by a sustainable agricultural system. The
National Catholic Rural Life Conference is a membership organization
grounded in a spiritual tradition which brings together the Church, care for
creation and care for community. The NCRLC fosters programs of direct
service and systemic change. As an educator in the faith, the NCRLC seeks to
relate religion to the rural world; develops support services for rural
pastoral ministers; serves as a prophetic voice and as a catalyst and
convener for social justice.